Each year, around 30 million dogs are slaughtered and eaten in Asia,
including Korea, China, Indonesia and Vietnam. In South Korea alone, it is
estimated that, annually, 2.5 million dogs and thousands of cats are brutally
slaughtered and eaten.

Dogs that are bred on dog farms live in miserable conditions. In South
Korea, dog meat consumption is illegal but their Government is allowing it to
continue, thereby causing immense suffering to these animals. All breeds of dog
are used for meat, including stolen pets and abandoned dogs. They are confined
to small, filthy cages, given rotten food and scraps which are unfit for
consumption, denied space to exercise, and given no shelter from extreme weather
conditions. They cannot even feel the ground beneath their paws as they are
contained in wire cages, raised off the ground. These conditions are deplorable
and cruel.

Dogs are slaughtered in the most brutal and painful methods, often in front
of other dogs which watch in fear for their lives. They are beaten, stabbed,
hanged, butchered, thrown into pots of boiling water, skinned, electrocuted or
blow torched – often whilst still alive. This inhumane torture has to
stop.

Mr Ricard, you also teach that “compassion towards … beings, including our
fellow animals, is the direction towards which any enlightened society must
aspire.” South Korea is a successful and prosperous nation, but it is not
‘enlightened’: there is little compassion shown to any of these animals, in any
of the processes in the dog and cat meat trades. Please join us in speaking out
openly against the violence that is being perpetrated daily in South Korea
towards these animals; please help stop these barbaric acts of torture, and the
unimaginable suffering.